Be Excellent To Each Other

Indeed Add to that the bigger size of the bag-for-life, and the storing and transporting of those, then it gets even worse!

The best thing is those tree-hugging jute bags that are so good for the environment. Each one of those bags has a whole of life carbon footprint of 51kg! You'd need to use one 4000 times to come out ahead

Like everything political parties do, it's all just posturing and all about vote-winning and being seen to be doing the right thing, rather than actually doing the right thing. Ban the carrier bags, because everyone knows them and sees them and uses them, we can spin it that is is a good thing and that'll win us some votes...

Good point. The bags for life are much larger and heavier, so take up a lot more physical space in landfills.
I'll give you the litter argument though

Plus it isn't entirely about the carbon footprint - all consumption causes some, after all, and the idea is to reduce it as far as possible; far better to do that by changing attitudes, so instead of a standard 'here's your stuff, here's a crappy bag', more and more people always have a bag tucked away in a pocket somewhere, more people just carry their few items to car or home and so on.

Did anyone else think "She did OK, there" after May bitchslapped the police federatin and told them to sort their stuff out?

1. The post wasn't about you, it was about cognitive dissonance and forms of persuasion.
2. Please highlight, in bold etc, what I directly wrote, or even some text you think vaguely implies, that you, or anyone else, had an axe to grind?
3. What are my "political beliefs" that I refuse to change "in the face of all the empirical evidence to the contrary"?
4. Given how you've gone off on one, maybe you do have a persecution complex?




re: Bag for life. Is it about the energy?

Landfills are full of plastic bags, because of how many we use, how we dispose off them and that most bags weren't recycleable. Once in the landfill they simply don't go away, because of their lack of biodegradability. Plastic bags will continue to be taken to the tip until plastic becomes a premium item to make and it's more economically viable to recycle/reuse the old bags.

So by using a bag for life, especially a hippie-tastic one made from hemp, you're reducing the number of bags sent to a landfill. And finding a new landfill sites that doesn't annoy people is a hard thing.

I use one as the thin plastic ones are shit and rip.

edit: Hmm JBR said the same thing.

I just think it's something that lets governments, businesses and individuals feel as though they are "doing their bit" when it costs them nothing and makes no meaningful contribution to anything. Not using disposable plastic bags doesn't prepare people for the fact that if they actually gave a toss then they wouldn't be jetting off on foreign holidays etc.

Oh yeah, absolutely - it starts as an entirely understandable reaction to something so little and yet so wasteful, then turns into a campaign and that draws attention away from the whole point.

Sorry, this is an interesting discussion. Could you please leave this crap out of this thread? I am just not interested. Thanks.

Yes I flipping well did, actually. Fair play to her; long overdue as far as I'm concerned.

That's the whole point, the move to reusable bags is quantifiably worse for the environment when you take a look across the whole lifecycle and how they are actually used by people. We are in a worse situation than before when it comes to environmental impact. That includes the landfill costs and impact, etc...
People have this idea that they are better, but they really aren't, it just seems like they should be.

Changing peoples attitudes to using bags was the right thing to do, we should have kept the old bags though and had a campaign of re-use and recycle of those, as that would have actually put us in a better position.

Ah yes... so many things in life - most especially in matters of politics - seem like they "should" be better (or "should" achieve the desired, no doubt entirely well-intentioned result), but very often (sadly) do not do anything of the sort...

They should just charge for the bags, like M&S and Aldi do.

You're the one that had a go at him over nothing you tit! He was just expanding on the concept of cognitive dissonance and you needlessly decided it was an attack on you and threw a load of genuinely bizarre accusations at him. You do a good job at pretending to be reasonable, and often times actually manage it, but this tendency to fly off the handle in a paranoid heart beat is really unpleasant.

Have you got a source for this? Everything I can find says it is more like 170 times and the normal reusable bags need to be used 10 or 11 times, which is some discrepancy and makes me wonder about your other figures.

But either way all this talk of plastic bags still makes me think of deckchairs on the Titanic. An utterly irrelevant distraction.

I use the bigger bags I've bought for storing firewood after they get used for transporting beer up the big hill.

Oh FFS.
I was QUOTED in that post, so pardon me for thinking it had anything to do with me, along with all the other tiresome crap he's thrown at me previously.

So yeah, how "bizarre" eh.

What the fuck has this got to do with you anyway? Are you Pod's GF?

I am NOT interested in this. You think I'm a "tit", fine by me, but could you leave those who actually do want to discuss with me alone in this one thread without derailing it? Last word from me on this petty crap.

UK Environment Agency Report SC030148/2011
http://www.incpen.org/docs/Life%20cycle ... report.pdf

Admittedly, I'm just quoting the carbon footprint numbers for hyperbole sake, rather than the full GWP number

It's coming, October 2015 all single use plastic bags will cost a mandatory 5p across England.

This. Very impressed.

Yes, I thought that was true political bravery, a rare thing imo.

Right. So not so much hyperbole as just absolute bollocks then.

That's not the part I called bizarre, I was talking about the mad nonsense you chucked at Pod about "axes to grind" and "intransigent political beliefs". Seriously where in God's name did that come from?



You should have at least quoted Grim properly there, 'credit' where it's due and all that. Although it's as idiotic a response on a public discussion board as it ever was of course.



Your paranoia flares up for the umpteenth time and you give someone a needless verbal kick in the teeth, but minutes later it's all, "I'm not interested" and "petty crap" and you trying to desperately claim the moral high ground. God forbid you should ever actually look at what you wrote and consider the slightest possibility that you over-reacted and caused the very chat you're now railing against.

Have you read the report? I assume not.

Try this

http://www.carrierbagtax.com/downloads/ ... _Pages.pdf

It might be easier for you to read

I think I was after listening to the interviews with the federation people the days prior. The second acocunts and 'robust discussions' and people 'protecting empires' made it all sound (especially after Plebgate) not terribly good.

Isn't ACPO also on the way out? Both those bodies got too powerful for both their own and the country's good. Shame Labour were too obsessed with looking 'soft' on crime to tackle them.

It's the problem with trade unions, though, isn't it?* I'll ask the copper I was out with on Saturday if he's allowed out to play again. Certainly, the actions of the police have done nothing to garner any form of public trust in them, and if the allegations of nest feathering are true, then a stern reminder that they are public servants is pobably the best thing to do, next to taking a new broom to the lot.

*Am aware it isn't a trade union, but it acts and behaves like one at times.

Addendum: One of the major positives of the commute in the car is listening to R4 again. ANd aggressively tailgating SUVs in the Ka up the M606.

I have to agree, sadly.



Oh man,

R4 is just awesome.

Latest Britain-wide vote share projections:

UKIP 17%
Lab 31%
Con 29%
LD 13%

Not quite as bad as I was expecting; ~1-in-6 votes for UKIP.

I'm not reading 120 pages.



I've used my PP non-woven bag many more than 14 times. (I think it's a pp non-woven bag). I am conscience clear! One thing they're missing on their "myth busters" is how crappy and thin the cheap bags are and how anything square shaped tears a hole in it. It's ok if you're dumping it in the back of a car, but carrying them for more than a few minutes sucks.

14 times is based on bag purchasing by kg though, when you look at the carbon footprint bag vs bag rather total bag weight, they are the figures i've already posted.
I don't know about you, but I don't buy my bags by the kilo!

Anyone who can't make a bag for life last >20 times shouldn't be allowed to do shopping.


with that said, I'm going to.grab some scissors and slash the SHIT out of ours.

Bloody hell, seriously?
I'm lucky if I can make one last between the boot of the car and the kitchen worktop... yup, I'm one of those who tries to get about 50kg of stuff in per bag (usually quite a few bottles )

I did I couldn't find the bit where it said:

"Each one of those bags has a whole of life carbon footprint of 51kg! You'd need to use one 4000 times to come out ahead"

Or anything like it.

What it says is this:

The paper, LDPE, non-woven PP and cotton bags should be reused at least 3, 4,
11 and 131 times respectively to ensure that they have lower global warming
potential than conventional HDPE carrier bags that are not reused. The number of
times each would have to be reused when different proportions of conventional
(HDPE) carrier bags are reused are shown in the table below.

Which is an order of magnitude away from the figures you were spouting and nothing to do with per Kg.

yeah, even after they start splitting they still go on for ages. It's my.bottles that tend to do that to them too, bloody beer caps.

Look at the pdf I linked to which pulls out the figures per bag, not per kg.

Or don't, it's up to you...

The plastic bag recycling figures are pretty bent, the UK just used to send ship loads of them to India and let some town gas its self on the fumes.

Then it was "we have put X% less bags in landfill this year" when really they were pushing the issue elsewhere, not really very global

As for 5p a bag in M&S that's not really consistent, go buy a pack of socks and they give you a huge thick plastic bag for nothing, bag of crisps, 5p for a shit bag.

Wonder what will be done with all the 5p's they will collect from October 2015? Spent on more ships to send bags somewhere poor I suspect

In Wales, which started doing this years ago, the retailers have to give it to local charities.

And the carbon footprint of these awful plastic bags is why I drive to the supermarket every single evening to only bring small amounts of shopping home in a designer leather handbag.

I'm joking, of course. I can't afford designer leather handbags. Or leather handbags. Or handbags. Or a car. Or food.

Stupid weddings.

The issue for me here is that I'm not of the view that man-made climate change isn't a reality anyway; just merely that I personally have doubts, not least because of stuff that I linked in response to Doc earlier. I don't think that merely having some doubts about an accepted viewpoint even actually constitutes a "view" of itself, does it? Certainly not in the way that I think is implied (not by you, but cognitive dissonance).

As for your second point, I don't even regard myself as "right wing", less still a "traditional conservative". But in any case, for me at least, this isn't actually a matter of personal politics/political beliefs (which I guess explains my reaction to having this crop up in a political thread). No, for good or ill this piques my engineering brain, not my political one, such as it is on both counts.



Well, yes, this is precisely my concern. To my mind, it seems inconceivable that we can have 98% unanimity among Scientists, when as per that Nature article, the models don't stack up to empirical data [subject to my reviewing Doc's info which I will do]. My worry is that there could be this 'don't stick your head above the parapet' type syndrome at play? I'm certainly not saying this is happening, but for me at least, it's a concern?

I've been trying to find the total usage figures for single use bags plus reusable bags over recent years, which would be the most telling figure, but they don't seem to be published anywhere.

I know that it was 6.5 billion single use bags in 2006, but nothing reported since then.

Some plastic facts..!

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/plastic-bag-stats.html

I recently recovered a bag for life that has been sitting in a loft in Manchester for around 8 years. It's still in incredibly good nick (turns out sitting there doing fuck all doesn't damage it much) and it was packed with old tools and other shit. I cleaned it out and have now repurposed it to hold either shopping or my recycling depending on the need.

I generally like the bags for life for their sturdyness, and I will reuse them until they literally disintegrate. I still occasionally get normal plastic bags, and use them as bin-liners for small bins.

Result! BINS HAVE BEEN MENTIONED.

In other news, I feel rough as a bears arse, on account of Mrs C and I doing a "Dick and Liz" [Burton/Taylor] 2-man party until vodka shots @6am (yes really), and we are supposed to be entertaining shortly... Thank fuck for quadruple ristrettos

*looks at European results*

Oh, for the love of fuck.

it depresses me that the party guaranteed to do jack sjit for 'us' is the one that seemsto be winning.

Unsurprising and depressing result. Cue a massive swing to the right and the emergence of the pact with UKIP which the Tories keep dismissing. They've got no other choice, Europe has always split the party internally but UKIP means the split threatens to become external. They are in a hole, basically, they want to be seen by their backers as the party which represents the interests of business first and foremost but business leaders generally want us to stay within Europe but that's not something they can realistically guarantee.

I'm not even gloating about this because Labour are providing no real opposition and no compelling alternative right now. There are so many ways they could attack this shitty government but they are just staring dumbfounded at an open goal while the terrifying prospect of either an ultra right wing Tory government or equally right wing Tory/UKIP coalition looms large for 2015.

It can't all be right wing people voting for UKIP

He got almost 30% of the cast votes.

Its also the first time in 100 years that a none "major" party has won a major election.

Depressed now.

Fuck me the cybernaws are actually celebrating UKIP getting a Scottish MEP as it "shows we're not much different from the rUK". Even if you ignore there being almost a fifth more UKIP voters (% of vote) south of the wall I'm not sure we should be over the moon that we have mongs too